Obama’s “Four more years” bumps Bieber for most retweeted tweet ever

Not only did President Barack Obama beat challenger Mitt Romney to win reelection, but he shoved pop star Justin Bieber off the top of the charts for most re-tweeted Twitter tweet ever.

The tweet, “Four more years,” with a photo of the president hugging first lady Michelle Obama, was sent about 8:16 p.m. Pacific time as the major TV networks were calling the race in Obama’s favor. In three hours, the message had been re-tweeted about 455,000 times, easily shattering the previous record of 223,000 set by Bieber in September.

By noon Wednesday, it had been re-tweeted more than 718,800 times and made a favorite by 248,400 people. The same photo was posted on Obama’s reelection page on Facebook and liked by nearly 3.6 million people. (UPDATE: Facebook said when the photo hit 2.1 million likes, it became the most liked photo on the social network of all time. There were also 71.7 million election-related posts and comments on Facebook in the U.S. on election day.)

Another tweet, “This happened because of you. Thank you,” has been re-tweeted more than 242,000 times.

Those tweets were sent by Obama’s campaign staff, which actually runs the @barackobama account. But tweets Obama sends himself are marked with his initials. So this tweet that preceded the “four more years” tweet by about a minute amounts to the social media-age version of a victory speech:

We’re all in this together. That’s how we campaigned, and that’s who we are. Thank you. -bo

That one has only been re-tweeted 160,000 times, which places it third behind Bieber’s old record holder, but still well ahead of Green Bay Packers guard T.J. Lang’s F-bomb tweet after a call by replacement referees cost his team a game.

And in the old days, foreign heads of state would send a cable congratulating Obama. Last night, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Malaysian Prime Minister Mohd Najib Tun Razak and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard posted their congrats on Twitter.

Warm congratulations to my friend @barackobama. Look forward to continuing to work together.

Trump was only part of the wave of tweets on Twitter at that moment. The San Francisco company said in a blog post that traffic peaked at 327,452 tweets per minute at 8:19 p.m. Pacific Time as the networks called the presidential election for Obama.

During the day, there was a total of about 31 million tweets about Election Day 2012. It averaged 9,965 tweets per second between 8:11 p.m. and 9:11 p.m., “with a one-second peak of 15,107 TPS at 8:20pm PT and a one-minute peak of 874,560 TPM,” Mazen Rawashdeh, vice president of infrastructure operations engineering, said on a company engineering blog.

“Seeing a sustained peak over the course of an entire event is a change from the way people have previously turned to Twitter during live events,” Rawashdeh said.

Twitter Nation also showed how it can be easily distracted. While Obama was giving his rousing victory speech at campaign headquarters, the anonymous woman standing behind him with an American flag stuck in her hair became a top trending topic as tweets like “#flaghair” or “#flagheadlady” almost stole the show.